Mind/Reader - Hardcover

Freemantle, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312186541 ISBN 13: 9780312186548

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 1998

Synopsis

As a vicious serial killer leaves a trail of dismembered bodies across Europe, Claudine Carter, Britain's leading psychological profiler, teams up with a forensic pathologist and a computer wizard to track the murderer, only to become the next target of a ruthless madman. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

Review

There's a lot going on in Brian Freemantle's latest, which looks like the start of a promising series about Claudine Carter, an Anglo-French forensic psychologist and criminal profiler. Carter works for Europol, a new agency based on the FBI that actually exists (as the author tells us), but not in the size or strength projected here. A large part of the story concerns the infighting and backstabbing between the various countries involved in the fledgling agency. Dr. Carter is a beautiful woman whose British husband hanged himself five months before, and who now faces a frightening investigation into her personal life just as her biggest professional challenge--a series of gruesome murders and dismemberments, spelled out in full detail--is underway. Add to that an ambitious French boss, Henri Sanglier, who fears that Carter's late father (a failed Interpol agent) found out something damning about Sanglier's Resistance hero father; the fact that Dr. Carter's French restaurateur mother is very ill; a possible romance between Claudine and an Italian pathologist with secrets of his own; and an ongoing threat to a famous American profiler from a killer he once helped convict and you have a full plate indeed. But all of the ingredients are colorful, and, as usual, Freemantle (who also writes the Charlie Muffin series) serves them up with style and energy. --Dick Adler

From Kirkus Reviews

This time out, veteran Freemantle (Bomb Grade, 1997, etc.) gives us more than just a classy thriller. It's also a biting study of the paranoia inherent in all bureaucracies. True enough, he does take a painfully long time80 pages or soin getting started. Once the stage has been set, though, the rewards pile up: a quickened narrative pace, vivid characterizations, and a romance fresher than most thrillers usually deliver. Claudine Carter (French mother, English father) is a profiler. Well, not just any profiler, she's Britain's best, posted to The Hague to be part of Europol. It's a pivotal moment in that infant organization's history. Struggling to become the European Union's FBI, it's in desperate need of a score in order to be taken seriouslyand at exactly the right time, a big case looms. Dismembered bodies are being discovered in major cities across 15 nations, and it's clear that this grisliness is meant to convey some kind of awful message. How to interpret it? And is it the work of a serial killeror a clutch of them? For Europol, the opportunity is obvious, but Claudine, the lynchpin of the ad hoc team assigned to the case, is surrounded by dedicated careerists. Which is to say, by accomplished back-stabbers, skilled manipulators, and all manner of bureaucratic rabbits. A problem-solver like Claudine, selfless and honest, threatens and terrifies them: they'd rather fail than see her succeed. But Claudine finds people to help herand a man to lovein unexpected places. And from within herself, for the sake of the greater good, she summons up the will and the wiles to deal with her enemies, ploy for ploy. Sharply observed and, except for the molasses-like start, deftly told. Hard-shelled but soft at the core, Claudine makes things all the better. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0312186541
• ISBN 13: 9780312186548
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 475